An aircraft has a power structure that is comprised of several components, such as an engine, an environmental control system and a thermal management system. These systems are designed relatively independently from each other with power being transferred from one system to another.
An environmental control system (ECS) supplies pressurized air to any environment, such as a cabin and flight deck of an aircraft, for both comfort and pressurization. The pressurized air supplied by the ECS may originate from a compressor stage of an engine (e.g., via a bleed air system) and/or directly from exterior air (e.g., via a ram air system). The interaction of the ECS with the engine in a bleed air system influences how much fuel burn by the engine is needed to perform operations, such as supplying pressurized air, related to that interaction.
For example, in a bleed air system of an aircraft, air is extracted from an engine core at a pre-defined stage location in an engine compressor region of the engine core to provide cooling air to an aircraft cabin. Yet, at present, the pre-defined stage location is limited to a high pressure location of the engine compressor region so that pressure requirements of the bleed air system of the aircraft are met. Unfortunately, the selection of the high pressure location increases or negatively influences airplane fuel burn.